The following is a short interview with Succinctly series author Gaurav
Arora, whose latest book, ASP.NET
WebHooks Succinctly, was published recently. You can download the
book here.

What should people
know about the subject of your book? Why is it important?

Simply put, it is a means of
wiring up any Web APIs with SaaS services. It is an HTTP implementation in a
pub/sub model. The proven simplicity of this technology has prompted a large
number of services, including Dropbox, GitHub, Bitbucket, MailChimp, PayPal,
Slack, Stripe, and Trello, to expose WebHooks for their services.

When did you first
become interested in this subject?

While executing a large web
services-based project, it became quite evident that the lack of feedback from
the services was affecting the overall design we had in mind. What was required,
in essence, was a simple way of getting feedback without the complex plumbing.
Hence, our use of WebHooks over HTTP began.

I personally see this going a long
way in the same direction and becoming even more widely accepted. The work that
I have planned in this cannot be termed as a change, but rather an addition of
more features. I am sure this will make this even more beneficial for the
community. This technology is already deeply pervasive in the current scenario.
Some good examples of upcoming additions could be Azure functions, Azure
Alerts, etc.

Do you see the
subject as part of a larger trend in software development?

Yes, definitely. There is no doubt
that as this technology further progresses, there is a very high probability
that this technology is going to stay for a long time to come. The small
footprint of this technology makes its implementation easier for everyone.